


A Sleeping Sith

by Capella



Category: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:43:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capella/pseuds/Capella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Never startle a sleeping Sith.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sleeping Sith

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since I first met Quinn in beta, I've wanted to write about him and the female Sith Warrior PC. She pursues, he runs away, she embarrasses him, he tolerates it... Their dynamic is so much fun.

Quinn took the early morning watch because he was so used to it that he’d grown to enjoy the hours. For the first few weeks falling into the new-but-old routine had been enough of a break from the dead quiet of Balmorra’s pre-dawn hours that he’d had little time to be idle. It had been a joy to find himself at the helm of a vessel again and feel her responding under his hands- and what a response the Fury-class ship had! Familiarizing himself with how the vessel worked in practice, not just in schematics, had been his favorite part of his new liaison post. The rest of the new assignments he’d been expected to take on were also challenging enough to be interesting, but didn’t hold the same draw for him as the feeling of his hands on a starship’s console.

Except for working with his lord. That was as intoxicating, in its own way, as the lure of open space and a nimble vessel. More dangerous, though. An accident in space would kill one quickly enough; a crossed Sith lord could make your end take hours and days. He’d seen men and women who didn’t deserve that kind of fate suffer at the hands of Sith who’d taken even something as small as an “improper posture” as an offense punishable by death. While his lord had so far behaved in a manner far more reasonable than that, he wasn’t one to trust to the good graces of a Sith without evidence more solid than a few weeks of impressions, and certainly not when she displayed signs of irrational behavior directed towards him.

In the quiet moments in the morning when he was mostly convinced she wasn’t going to listen in on his thoughts, he allowed himself to admit to the part where he was powerfully drawn to her. Certainly there was much to appreciate- attractive physically, a keen tactical mind, a strength of conviction he’d rarely encountered in anyone, much less a Sith. But he also knew that Sith were capricious, and her flirtations (subtle and blatant both) were likely to stop any day when she got bored and found a new amusement to pursue. Preferably making someone who was not him uncomfortable. Expressing reciprocal interest was too much of a risk for him to feel comfortable taking, regardless of how appealing he found the option.

That didn’t mean that sometimes he didn’t give in to impulses that went against his better judgement. He was, after all, only human, and being tired did tend to lower his ability to think through decisions. And at 0700 hours when his watch was ending, his impulses led him to be approaching the door of the briefing room with a datapad in one hand and a cup of hot caf in the other. His intention was to place them at her seat for her to peruse when she woke up; he wasn’t expecting what came next.

The door hissed open. Before he was more than two steps in it, he was suddenly assaulted by a hail of datapads flying from the table at his face. He instinctively raised one hand to protect his face, felt the sting of hot caf as it spilled over onto his hand with the rapid motion, and then found it clamped in the (very strong, strong enough to break bones with barely a flex, a rational part of his mind calculated in the background) grip of one very angry looking Sith warrior.

“My lord, I-” he began.

She shook her head, dropped his arm, and took two steps back. “Dammit captain, I could have killed you,” she snarled. “What are you doing barging in here at this hour of the morning?”

“I wasn’t aware that you were sleeping in here, my lord,” he apologized. “I assumed that you were in your quarters.”

“Well I wasn’t,” she muttered, folding her arms over her chest.

His eyes followed the movement, noticed she was clad only in her skin-tight underlay suit, quickly jumped to scanning the room as a safer option. He noted the rest of her armor discarded on one end of the table, her cloak folded on the table above her seat presumably as a pillow. “Might I ask why you fell asleep in here?” he risked.

“Reviewing files, and then-” She shrugged. “So why are you in here at- what time is it?”

“0705, my lord. II know you’re usually awake for the morning by 0730, so I thought I’d leave caf on your desk for you.”

She didn’t comment, instead looking at his hand. “Let me get a medikit. Does it hurt?”

Quinn looked down at his hand in an attempt to not overtly watch her cross the room. “It’s survivable.” Though it was starting to hurt now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

She brought the kit over and started applying kolto to it. “Lesson one, captain- never startle a sleeping Sith.” The words could have been sharp, but her tone was light enough to be playful.

He normally wouldn’t have risked it, but the combination of end-of-shift tiredness and the residual hormonal shock seemed to have dropped his inhibitions entirely. “Perhaps the Sith should sleep in her quarters to avoid traumatizing her crew then.”

“Perhaps if her quarters weren’t so lonely, she might,” his lord retorted.

He flushed, horrified by his own temerity. “My lord, it was not my intent to suggest-”

“Of course it wasn’t.” His imagination, or was there a hint of resignation in that flat tone? “ Get some sleep, and I hope the hand feels better. Your shift stands relieved, captain.”

He drew himself to attention and clicked his heels together in lieu of saluting with the wounded hand. “Yes, my lord,” he said as he turned to depart.

“And captain?” He turned to look at her, and was surprised to see a tiny smile on her face. “It was- a thoughtful gesture.”

He hurried out the door before he could say or do anything else stupid.


End file.
